Beat me to it.......

When I saw that signature 'Doing for dogs what SOTP did for Canoeing' (not cut and pasted so apologies if not exact) I knew I had missed the proverbial boat!

Two years ago we acquired our first 'proper' dog. The Cocker Spaniel pup climbed out out of the litter to chose the Gruppenfuher and the rest as they say is history. Despite all this love at first site malarkey, it is the rank and file that get to do the exercising, but being 50 something and a stone (thats 6.something kg to les continentales) overweight, I thought this might be 'a good thing'! Unfortunately, Poppy the Puppy, although the most expert at being a dog we had in the house, was not aware of where all dog walks were in around our Midlands home town of Nuneaton. Given that she was born in Birmingham I did consider returning to the region of her birth to see if nature had imbued her with a sense of local geography, but as I wanted to return to the car and find it still had four wheels on I decided to look for more local walks myself. For her, now renamed PoppyDog, for some reason I will never know, it was going to be nurture over nature as far as walking was concerned. For me it was a case of research.

With her having such boundless energy and inquisiteness, and us living on a main road meant I had to look for places other than small local parks to walk PoppyDog so I headed off through gaps in the hedge and over or around the fields. Realising that no one else had walked this way before and I always seemed to have to climb over locked gates made me think I was not where I ought to be. Where do other dog walkers go to find out where to take their treasured pets I wondered. What we need is a website, a forum like SOTP, where likeminded people can tell each other about their experiences, triumphs and travails. Could I find such a site, no I could not. Make one, I said to myself. 'Get on with your proper job and don't forget to pay the mortgage' said the Gruppenfuhrer, and so the idea languished, making only fleeting appearances at the bottom of my 'to do' list.

So my next investment was an OS map and freedom followed, for both of us. We now have a wide variety of walks that we can take, across a range of terrain, distances, difficulty (for me) and within maximum of 15 minutes drive of the house. Now past her second birthday, PoppyDog has developed an enthusiasm for being off the lead that is matched only by her energy levels. Open grassland, woodland, the sea, brooks and rivers are her rich and varied playground and the vet recently rewarded us with 'she is obviously a healthy, happy dog' so despite she and I both being beginners we seem to be doing something right.
The family seem to have found a flexible dog and a name to match. When she looks at you in that certain manner because you have not thrown the ball recently she is known as StroppyDog. Lying on he back waiting for tummy to be tickled she is SoppyDog. After that long Sunday morning walk when her only response to being called is to raise an eyebrow, she is FloppyDog. Like all of us she has her moments, though rather than the tantrums seen from the foster children, hers will involve balls/teddys, high speed chases and sliding across the laminate floor only to crash head first into the settee. Surely her demise will be due to brain damage rather than old age or exhaustion.

For us it has been a great experience bringing her up and watching her develop into an essential -dare I say, central - member of the family. But I am still a stone overweight, and now Magikelly has created this site. Oh, well! C'est la vie!

Cocker Spaniels are full of energy so I can see you will have a lot of dog walking to share. She sounds like a real character too. Dog do become such a part of the family, that is another reason why I started the forum. It just seems wrong not to share that. As my daily bloggs from this holiday show, Sam is at the heart of the family and part of pretty much everything we do. I'm sure it is the same for many families. We just need them to find the site.

So welcome again, and sorry for stealing our idea, but feel free to treat the site as your own and fill it with threads, comments and pictures